“I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.” — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.” — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. -----… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I’ll tell you a thing that will shock you. It will certainly shock the readers of Writer’s Digest. What I often do… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
One goes on writing partly because it is the only available way of earning a living. It is a hard way and… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“A man who serves language, however imperfectly, should always serve truth.” — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
